Empire and Harrow’s “Epic of War:” British Officers and Imperial Culture in the First World War

Stice, Elizabeth

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-49325-6_6

Elizabeth Stice³

29 Accesses

Abstract

In the middle of the Great War, General Horace Smith-Dorrien, an Old Harrovian, published Harrow’s Epic of War, a short book which explained “how the school on the hill covered itself with glory.” The Great War has long been connected with public school boys, especially in its British literary tradition. Harrow is a school especially deserving of the association. Nearly 3000 Harrovians served in the military during the First World War and over 600 were killed. In the first years of the war, many of Harrow’s fallen had fought before, in the Boer War, other African campaigns, or in India. This chapter explores the links between Harrow and empire in primary sources from the war, especially The Harrovian, a paper for current students and alumni with contributions from both. Such an exploration can help establish the relationship between the ideal of the imperial soldier, so well described in Edward Berenson’s Heroes of Empire, and the ways that British men interpreted and experienced soldiering in the Great War. The prior imperial service of so many officers surely shaped their understanding of the First World War. With its tradition of military service and its wartime publications, Harrow provides the perfect location to begin exploring these connections. These findings will help us comprehend the ways in which empire framed the wartime experience and the extent to which British soldiers were consciously participating in imperial culture.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 109.00; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 139.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
Spencer Jones, From Boer War to World War: Tactical Reform of the British Army, 1902–1914 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012), 214.
2.
Edward Berenson, Heroes of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).
3.
See, for example, Ray Costello, Black Tommies: British Soldiers of African Descent in the First World War (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015); Jacques Frémeaux, Les Colonies Dans La Grande Guerre (Soteca, 2006); Richard Fogarty, Race & War in France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); Andrew Jarboe, Indian Soldiers in World War I: Race and Representation in an Imperial War (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2021); Radhika Singha, The Coolie’s Great War: Indian Labour in a Global Conflict, 1914–1919 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
4.
Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 13.
5.
The effect on all members of the military is interesting and significant, but this chapter is focused on the perspective of British officers.
6.
Horace Smith-Dorrien, Memories of Forty-Eight Years’ Service (London: John Murray, 1925), 3.
7.
“Old Harrovian” is a term used to refer to alumni of Harrow School. Graduates are also sometimes called “Old Boys,” though that term is used by many schools.
8.
Christopher Tyerman, A History of Harrow School 1324–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 7.
9.
Tyerman, 99.
10.
Tyerman, 256.
11.
Porter, 41.
12.
Tyerman, 103.
13.
Porter, 50–51.
14.
Simon Robbins, British Generalship on the Western Front 1914–1918: Defeat into Victory (London: Frank Cass, 2005), 3, 11.
15.
Harrovian War Supplement (November 1914), 2–3.
16.
https://www.harrowschool-ww1.org.uk/Filename.ashx?systemFileName=%2FDOCS%2FHarrovianWarsSupplement1918.pdf&origFilename=
17.
Peter Hodgkinson, “The Infantry Battalion Commanding Officers of the BEF,” in Stemming the Tide: Officers and Leadership in the British Expeditionary Force 1914, ed. Spencer Jones (West Midlands, England: Helion & Company Limited, 2013), 299.
18.
Harrovian War Supplement, No. 2 (December 1914), 3.
19.
Ibid., 3.
20.
Harrovian War Supplement (November 1914), 6–7.
21.
Harrovian War Supplement, No. 3 (February 1915), 3.
22.
Harrovian War Supplement, No. 4 (April 1915), 6.
23.
Harrovian War Supplement, No. 5 (May 1915), 4.
24.
Harrovian War Supplement, No. 3 (February 1915), 3.
25.
In contrast, family life typically received relatively little mention.
26.
Harrovian War Supplement (November 1914), 4.
27.
Harrovian War Supplement (November 1914), 5.
28.
Harrovian War Supplement, No. 3 (February 1915), 4.
29.
Harrovian War Supplement, No. 3, ii (June 1917), 18.
30.
Ibid.
31.
Harrovian War Supplement, No. 3, ii (June 1917), 18.
32.
Harrovian War Supplement, No. 2, i (October 1915), 17.
33.
The Second Boer War ended twelve years before the Great War began, so some veterans would have been somewhat aged.
34.
Smith-Dorrien, Memories of Forty-Eight Years’ Service, vi.
35.
Smith-Dorrien, Memories of Forty-Eight Years’ Service, vi-vii, 18.
36.
Smith-Dorrien, Memories of Forty-Eight Years’ Service, 19.
37.
Ibid.
38.
Smith-Dorrien, Memories of Forty-Eight Years’ Service, 301.
39.
Smith-Dorrien, Memories of Forty-Eight Years’ Service, 472.
40.
Smith-Dorrien, Memories of Forty-Eight Years’ Service, 430.
41.
Horace Smith-Dorrien, Harrow’s Epic of War (Harrow: Harrow School Book Shop, 1916), 10.
42.
Smith-Dorrien, Harrow’s Epic of War, 24.
43.
Smith-Dorrien, Harrow’s Epic of War, 7.
44.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXVII, No. 3 (May 30th, 1914), 37–38, 47–48, 56.
45.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXVII, No. 4 (July 2nd, 1914), 65.
46.
This is consistent with the work of Bernard Porter, who also considered Harrow in his book The Absent-Minded Imperialists.
47.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXVII, No. 7 (November 21st, 1914), 123.
48.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXIX, No. 3 (June 3rd, 1916), 40.
49.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXIX, No. 2 (April 1st, 1916), 21.
50.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXVIII, No. 1 (February 20th, 1915), 12–13.
51.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXVII, No. 7 (November 21st, 1914), 131.
52.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXVII, No. 7 (November 21st, 1914), 131.
53.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXVII, No. 7 (November 21st, 1914), 131.
54.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXXI, No. 2 (March 31st, 1917), 21.
55.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXXI, No. 5 (July 20th, 1918), 87.
56.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXVII, No. 8 (December 19th, 1914), 134–5.
57.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXIX, No. 5 (July 29th, 1916), 59.
58.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXIX, No. 2 (April 1st, 1916), 17.
59.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXX, No. 1 (March 3rd, 1917), 6.
60.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXVIII, No. 4 (June 26th, 1915), 55.
61.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXVIII, No. 4 (June 26th, 1915), 56.
62.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXVII, No. 6 (October 17th, 1914), 107.
63.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXXII, No. 1 (March 1st, 1919), 6.
64.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXXI, No. 7 (December 14th, 1918), 116.
65.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXXII, No. 2 (April 5th, 1919), 11.
66.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXXII, No. 2 (April 5th, 1919), 11.
67.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXXII, No. 2 (April 5th, 1919), 12.
68.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXX, No. 3 (June 2nd, 1917), 35.
69.
The Harrovian, Vol. XXVIII, No. 6 (October 23rd, 1915), 74.
70.
Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity, The ‘manly Englishman’ and the ‘effeminate Bengali’ in the late nineteenth century (Manchester University Press, 1995), 182.
71.
Spencer Jones, ed., “Introduction,” Stemming the Tide: Officers and Leadership in the British Expeditionary Force 1914 (West Midlands, England: Helion & Company Limited, 2013), 18.
72.
Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 16.
73.
David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), xvii.
74.
Antoinette Burton, At the Heart of Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-Victorian Britain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 8.
75.
Cannadine, 122.
76.
Ernest W. Hamilton, The First Seven Divisions: Being a detailed account of the fighting from Mons to Ypres (New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1916), 41.
77.
Simon Robbins, British Generalship on the Western Front 1914–1918: Defeat Into Victory (London: Frank Cass, 2005), 2. See also: Timothy Bowman and Mark Connelly, The Edwardian Army: Recruiting, Training, and Deploying the British Army 1902–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Spencer Jones, From Boer War to World War: Tactical Reform of the British Army, 1902–1914 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012).
Spencer Jones, ed., Stemming the Tide: Officers and Leadership in the British Expeditionary Force 1914 (West Midlands, England: Helion & Company Limited, 2013).
78.
Frank Richards, Old Soldiers Never Die (London: Faber & Faber, 1933), 11–12.
79.
Richards, 266.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Palm Beach Atlantic University, West Palm Beach, FL, USA
Elizabeth Stice

Authors

Elizabeth Stice
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elizabeth Stice .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

The University of Texas at Tyler, Tyler, TX, USA
Mandy Link
The University of Texas at Tyler, Tyler, TX, USA
Matthew M. Stith

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Stice, E. (2024). Empire and Harrow’s “Epic of War:” British Officers and Imperial Culture in the First World War. In: Link, M., Stith, M.M. (eds) New Perspectives on the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49325-6_6

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49325-6_6
Published: 06 April 2024
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-49324-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-49325-6
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics